I still hear my father saying that I need to get my nose out of a book and outside into the sunshine as I needed a tan LOL. Imagine telling a child to go into the sun these days.

Umm, well, while we want them to use more sunscreen now, it's still important and good advice to get your nose out of the books and live life from time to time.
In addition to fresh air and such, it's kind of important to be in the world and not just read about it.

Too much of anything is no good.

Also, I wonder if being told to stop reading and go out an play served a reverse-psychology effect. I think it was the Dillards who said that the kids in the family all got interested in playing music because their father would leave all his instruments out in the living room and say "Don't touch those!"

Imagine my astonishment when I first came at my parents in law, and I couldn't find a book anywhere...

How well I can relate to that astonishment! I grew up in a poor home with many hundreds of books. When I first visited my husband's large impressive family home I was stunned to find that they seemed to be able to afford anything, yet had no books. The envy I first felt for his seemingly privileged childhood turned to pity.

My aunt was a school teacher and introduced me to books early on. I remember reading Beverly Cleary books. But I wasn't really dedicated to reading. Then when I was nine, I spent the summer with my grandparents. My uncle had just died in Viet Nam, and looking through his old things, I found his collection of Tom Swift Jr. books. I read them and was hooked. I went quickly to Edgar Rice Burroughs (Savage Pellucidar was also my first Burroughs, I think) and I never looked back.

My maternal grandfather and a paternal uncle were both voracious readers. My grandfather was in Illinois and my uncle was in Georgia. My father was military and we lived all over. My father would take leave and we would visit each family once a year. I was the go between. I would pick up books from one and drop off the ones from the other. And I got to read them in between. And traveling gave me plenty of time to read. We must have swapped many hundreds of books over the years.
Apache

I grew up in a family of readers, with a houseful of books. I can't remember a time when I couldn't read, but my mother told me that she used to read aloud to me, until one day I said, "I'd like to try that." That was before I started school, and I can remember a teacher "showing me off" to the elementary school principal because I could read aloud from the newspaper in kindergarten.

I always think it's a good thing I started reading early--there are so many books I want to read, and never enough time. (And they're always printing more! )

Yep, I think ebooks are great myself. There are many books that I'd never have a chance to acquire via traditional methods either due to them being out of print or too expensive (not to mention the problem of storage space) and with ebooks getting copies is as simple as going to a place like Amazon, Smashwords or here at MR and clicking a download link. If we aren't starting a golden age of reading I'll settle for what we have til the golden age starts.

How well I can relate to that astonishment! I grew up in a poor home with many hundreds of books. When I first visited my husband's large impressive family home I was stunned to find that they seemed to be able to afford anything, yet had no books. The envy I first felt for his seemingly privileged childhood turned to pity.

Yep, I think ebooks are great myself. There are many books that I'd never have a chance to acquire via traditional methods either due to them being out of print or too expensive (not to mention the problem of storage space) and with ebooks getting copies is as simple as going to a place like Amazon, Smashwords or here at MR and clicking a download link. If we aren't starting a golden age of reading I'll settle for what we have til the golden age starts.

Yep, the thing that pushed me over the edge into buying my first ereader - Sony 505 was the free public domain classics! Woo-Hoo!

My mother used to lock the door, so I couldn't come back inside until she thought I had enough sunshine (or she was able to stand us!)

That never happened to me. Of course I was born a red head and have always had rather fair skin color so being out in the sun too long usually resulted in a bad sun burn. One time I wore a tank top with open weave and rode my bike too long on a sunny day. I paid for it for several weeks thereafter. Reading was a good way to pass the time without risking that.